Many types of clothing, such as athletic shorts and sweat pants, use an elastic waistband in combination with a draw cord so that the garment can be worn by persons of different size. In most garments of this type, the elastic waistband and draw cord are incorporated into the garment in separate steps. First, the waistband is stretched and sewn to the garment. The second step involves forming a channel for the draw cord and then inserting the draw cord into the channel. The draw cord is inserted into the channel by inserting a flexible wire with a hook into the channel and pulling the draw cord through the channel. This technique is labor intensive and significantly increases production cost.
Recently, it has been proposed to form the draw cord as an integral part of the waistband in order to eliminate one step in the construction of garments. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,477,928 discloses an elastic band in which the draw cord is interwoven with the thread of the elastic band. One disadvantage of this process is that it requires the knitting or weaving machine used to manufacture the bands to be specially set up before beginning production of the composite waistband. Setting up the knitting and weaving machines can be a time-consuming process during which the machine is out of production. Once the knitting or weaving machine is properly set up to produce the composite waistband, the manufacturer will ordinarily produce a relatively large inventory of composite waistbands before switching production back to conventional elastic bands.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,040,244, discloses a composite waistband and draw cord in which the draw cord is releasibly secured to the surface of the waistband by an adhesive. However, the manufacturer of this type of composite waistband requires the use of special manufacturing equipment to heat and cure the adhesive.